White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that the Trump administration would not support anything that allows more drugs to come into the United States in response to a question about possible drug policy changes in Mexico.
Mexico’s incoming leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, reportedly gave his interior minister-designate “carte blanche” to consider eliminating drug penalties in a counterintuitive bid to reduce drug-linked violence.
“I don’t have a specific policy announcement on that front,” Sanders said at the daily White House press briefing. “However, I can say that we would not support the legalization of all drugs anywhere and certainly wouldn’t want to do anything that would allow more drugs to come into this country.”
[Also read: Prosecutors cautioned in May that increased immigration cases would divert from drug smuggling cases: Report]
Lopez Obrador’s incoming interior minister, Olga Sanchez Cordero, said Tuesday she will have broad leeway to review Mexico’s drug policies.
“On the subject of decriminalizing drugs, Andres Manuel told me, and I quote: ‘Carte blanche. Whatever is necessary to restore peace in this country. Let’s open up the debate,'” Sanchez Cordero said during a university seminar.
Mexico and some other Latin American countries already have decriminalized small-scale drug possession, in part to prevent police from extorting users.
In 2009 the Mexican government eliminated penalties for possessing drugs for personal use. The decriminalization law covers drugs including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine. People caught with more drugs than allowed are encouraged to seek treatment, with a third offense resulting in mandatory treatment.
Mexico’s decriminalization thresholds, however, are criticized by reformers as being too low — with Mexico still seeing 140,860 drug use arrests between between 2009 and May 2013.
Violence in Mexico surged last year, fueled by drug gangs responsible for sending contraband across the U.S. border. Calendar year 2017 was Mexico’s most murderous year on record, with 25,339 homicides, up 23 percent from 2016.
Mexico does not currently regulate the sale of recently illegal drugs, such as is happening in eight U.S. states that have passed laws allowing regulated recreational marijuana markets. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has claimed that pot legalization in the U.S. has resulted in some Mexican gangs smuggling state-legal U.S.-grown marijuana into Mexico.
Sanchez Cordero said a more lenient approach to drugs may be needed because other tactics to restore order have failed.
“What no one can deny with hard data is that, at least in the past 10 years, the Mexican government has been incapable of stopping violence and responding to it with institutional mechanisms,” she said.
